If you’re part of an non-conventional family and about to welcome a new child, finding a baby book is…probably the last thing on your mind, actually, as you have a million and one other things to think about. But it was really preying on my mother’s mind. She didn’t want me to have to get […]

CONTENT NOTE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; FORCED SEPARATION OF MOTHER AND CHILD Nan-Hui Jo, a South Korean woman, came to the US to study. She met her former partner, Jesse Charlton, and had a child with him, a little girl named Vitz Da. And in 2009, after suffering repeated violence and abuse, in an effort to save […]

CONTENT NOTE: VIOLENCE AGAINST TRANS WOMEN; DISCUSSION OF RAPE This article, by Kai Cheng Tom, is a moving and beautifully written piece about what it means to be a young trans woman of color and to read over and over again about the violent death of women like you. I have argued for years that […]

I found this interview in the NYT the other day about the philosophy of liberalism and its dependence on racism to be fascinating (let me hasten to say that nobody who has read Engels on the Irish, for example, could possibly say that radical leftism is not similarly based on racism). I do think it’s more important in the context of the US to understand the relationship between liberalism and racism because the US is a nation-state that is more or less based on liberal philosophies that largely can’t bear to hear any indication that such philosophies might be fallible (What did the founding fathers intend? Well, who gives a fuck what a bunch of rich slave-owning gentile white men intended? I’m not convinced they were bearing my best interests in mind.).

Well I just had to, didn’t I? Those llamas that escaped from a show and tell presentation in Sun City Arizona feature for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.* with a few netiquette exceptions

A University of Illinois student is facing charges for sexual assault after, he says, trying to re-enact a scene from — yup — Fifty Shades of Grey. Mohammad Hossain is accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student in his dorm room Saturday night, Christian-Grey-with-a-belt-in-the-Red-Room-of-Pain style.

I didn’t watch the Oscars because nobody was paying me to, but I did follow my friends watching them on Twitter, and here is what I gather: 1) Patricia Arquette made the stupidest white mainstream feminist plea for equal pay ever, claiming that “gays” and people of color need now to step up and fight […]

These two rainbow lorikeets having a little rest in one of Sydney’s Botanical Gardens are the hosts for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.* with a few netiquette exceptions

Now, some might see an eerie, atmospheric black-and-white shot of a tree with a noose hanging from it, titled, “The Hanging Tree,” and think, “Oh, God, lynching.” Accompany that image with an all-caps, italic COMING SOON, and some might think, “Wow, that’s verging on threatening.” But if you look at those things and think, “I bet there’s a new Photoshop action pack coming out, and I for one can. Not. Wait,” then either you work for Florida creative tool company Seasalt & Co. or are a friend of theirs and need to step in and tell them to get a grip.